My firm offers “unlimited PTO” but of course everyone understands the underlying dynamics behind that. As a first year, how much should I take? I have already taken 7 days around the holidays but my friends want to travel in April. What is the upper limit as to not be looked down on during my first year here?
Not sure there is an upper bound to unlimited?
I’ve heard often from some of my friends working at companies offering unlimited PTO about the dilemma regarding actually taking PTO. I personally have never been in such situation, and it’s much easier to take PTO to the maximum – as I always aim to do – if they’re specifically defined. Since your firm offers unlimited PTO, I’d think the more important factor you’d need to consider would be any conflict in terms of client booking you may have for April and what your utilization (not sure if this part matters for you – it mattered for me) looks like for the year should you take the PTO. Having taken 7 days off during holidays doesn’t seem that much – everyone I knew took more than that. If you’re assigned a professional mentor/coach at your company, seek advice from him/her directly, as the dynamics may be different across the teams and they’d be able to provide more applicable insight than the people here.
A&M's official policy recommends not taking more than 4 weeks. Assuming that you don't put any of your client work at risk, you are fine taking 4 weeks of PTO. Don't take it while you are staffed with tight deadlines, and also give your project manager as much notice as possible and you wont have an issue. Lastly, it's important to think about your utilization for the year. If you are on the edge of a utilization band and a few extra weeks of billable hours will put you into a higher bucket then it is probably worth only taking one or two weeks (depends on whats important to you).
I didn’t know that. This makes a lot of sense, thank you!
Then they should have just given 4 weeks to everyone. Why recommend ??
Get your work done. Don’t burn out. Take time regularly and often.
AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE
I would probably take 20 days the first year. And then if you perform well you could increase to 30-40 days a year
Working days? That seems like a lot for my first year though. I thought most other firms only offer 15 days so that’s the amount I should take. Unless you mean to take advantage of the unlimited policy
Take PTO until you reach 65 years old and then retire.
“This one trick HR doesn’t want you to know!”